Computers have become highly integrated in the workforce, in the home, in mobile devices, and many other places. Computers can process massive amounts of information quickly and efficiently. Software applications designed to run on computer systems allow users to perform a wide variety of functions including business applications, schoolwork, entertainment and more. Software applications are often designed to perform specific tasks, such as word processor applications for drafting documents, or email programs for sending, receiving and organizing email.
In some cases, software applications are designed to display diagrams, charts and other types of data presentations. Such software typically displays various nodes with lines or, more formally, “edges” connecting the nodes. The nodes may represent different diagram elements and the connecting edges may represent a link between the nodes. In some cases, when designing such a chart or diagram, a user may want to make changes to the positioning, scale or rotation of a selected node or group of nodes. Such position changes affect not only the repositioned node(s) but also the other nodes of the node diagram.
To deal with the repositioning of nodes, especially nodes in displayed in a large node diagrams, incremental data structures are often pre-calculated and stored in a repository. Then, when a node is repositioned, the diagram system implements the pre-computed incremental data structured along with real-time updates to the data structures. This process can be very computationally expensive.